Defence Against Darker Arts
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: The teacher could never win against the student, whether he loved her or she loved him or it was just a game of power between the two of them.


**A/N:** Written for the Hunger Games Competition, scoring section, for the Broaden Your Horizons: Angst Fics, category: forbidden love, for the Book Quotes Boot Camp, prompt #05 – "This perplexing, good natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly to be hopelessly in love with me ... and I admit it there are moments when he makes me believe it myself." – The Hunger Games, for the Monthy Oneshot and for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Challenge, Ravenclaw Year 1 DADA, with mandatory prompt: write about a teacher affected by the curse Tom Riddle put on the DADA position, and optional prompts: freedom, child, instance, truth, difference, goal and audience.

* * *

**Defence Against Darker Arts**

She was desperate when she signed up for the position, but it was an unneeded desperation. The incident that had lost her her previous job had been struck from her record – a favour, the principal said to her, because she had been a valued part of their institution. _Had_ been, as that hadn't stopped them forcing her resignation.

At least she wasn't naïve enough to think that innocence won out in the end, to think there really was a such thing as innocence in the adult world. Because a child who could barely tell one end of the wand from another had more power than a fully-grown wizard in a school, for a well-worded complaint to a parent or a rumour spread proved the power of the tongue to be mightier than a cast spell. And she was an honourable woman, she thought. Perhaps part of her was at fault, for how could she know how her eyes looked upon her student, or how his looked at her, or _why_.

She may have looked at her students as students like any other, but she had never thought to find that gaze under scrutiny. It was lucky for her the rest of the students had not heard the accusations – stemmed from a one-to-one tutoring session no less – but unfortunate as well. She had no chance to prove her innocence: it was the student and his parents against her, and no-one could defend her.

It was the principal, who kept in touch with his alumini, who warned her away from the position when he suggested places she could apply. But there were no other vacancies; no-one needed a Defence teacher in a time of relative peace – except Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, who could not seem to keep a teacher in that position for more than a year.

She needed a job; her funds were running low by then. So she signed up, and they took her.

* * *

She was shaking in front of her first class: twelve year old children whose eyes she could not meet. She knew it was illogical: she was the victim after all, not the perpetuator – a victim of a flawed world where a student could put more than their fists on the black market. But it had changed her, that one false accusation that had uprooted her. She couldn't look them in the eye, even if she'd never get their respect by talking to the desk.

It was lucky she didn't seem to expect much from her. Apparently they'd gone through several Defence teachers already, and all of them so very different they'd stopped expecting any sort of consistency. So they didn't cause much trouble; they were relieved enough she could teach, and answer questions.

The second years anyway. And the first. And some of the older ones – but she started having problems with the NEWTs classes. Because they were (for the most part) adults, and she could feel their frowns on her. Because the classes were smaller, more focused, more interactive, that she couldn't help but look at her students, and get to know them. Because there were so many _male_ students in her class, and one of them was blond and grinned with the same sass as a student she had once thought she'd known.

But she was a teacher, and the teacher in her was disgruntled at the class falling apart, at the Dark curses flying when they thought she wasn't watching, at the squabbles that happened when she didn't raise her voice. It shocked her, because the NEWTS students were older and wiser and didn't get the same freedom as the first years – and yet here they were, taking advantage of her, _abusing_ her.

It might have been a good thing, she mused, because it forced her to get back on her feet. It told her her students weren't going to step down for her; yes, she'd lost the battle of power once, but she was a teacher and a witch and she could put her foot down and win this different battle. So she did, demonstrating some nasty shields that attacked and defended at once, and let her voice bang off the words.

It was a good feeling, like Firewhiskey setting her heart on fire, and she had an elated grin on her face as the subdued NEWTs students filed out – and even when the blond, Lucius Malfoy, stopped and shot a grin at her, the elation stayed.

'You should be like this more often,' he said.

She shouldn't have. Really, she shouldn't have. But suddenly she was a teacher again, like she had been before that whole incident had stolen her work – and oh why hadn't she remembered exactly what had caused that mess in the first place?

* * *

Lucius was sharp. Too sharp. He knew the spells she showed weren't always on the curriculum – and some her own creation. Others didn't push, but he came to her and said he wanted to _know_, and really, who was she not to teach him?

So she became the tutor, and he the tutelage. His interest made her both forget and remember: forget the sin she had been accused of, remember the student who had accused – and then it became more than accusations when the sweat that drew his robes in highlighted every inch of his form, and she found herself staring with her mind's eye at what lay underneath.

She'd scold herself to tears thereafter, and wondered why fate was so cruel to make the perfect men the ones she could never have. It made her tempted to leave her job – but that was a foolish notion too, she thought. Falling in love with a fantasy, and she'd sniff, blow her nose and repair the damaged make-up, and then head to another class.

But she couldn't do that, couldn't keep up her mask. Because he pushed her hard, pushed her until there was no mask nor restraint left, pushed her until her self-restraint was mush and her professionalism tossed to the winds – because she was the teacher, and he was the student, but he was so much older than his years and she was still so young, and she sometimes forgot. And in those forgetful moments she was free, free to indulge herself in never-to-happen fantasies, free to imagine she was _alive_ and happy, free to dream to her heart's content.

But then he called her out on it, one day. And her heart crumbled.

* * *

He had been the only audience to her shame, but years later she realised how ensnared she had been, and she couldn't believe she had been so…foolish. Milked for information and then discarded – and tears ran down her pale cheeks as she remembered the days after. Remembered going to the Headmaster and throwing her heart upon his desk, remembered the sobbing shameful words that had escaped her mouth as she confessed her sin, remembered the look of sorrow and pity on his face as he signed her last paycheck, offered help she simply could not accept –

No Defence teacher had lasted a year at that school. She didn't know why, but later she came to hear of a curse that plagued it. Anything from death to a scandal drove a teacher who held that position away, and she came to know it all in the years that followed, the years she threw her teaching guise down for good and took the wand as a hammer to smash the unfairness of life.

She became an Auror, training every day until she bled with sweat, firing spells without limit until she caught her black little mice. But that had never been her goal; she'd just wanted to be a teacher, teach her students to live in the world, and live herself. And yet it wasn't to happen. Maybe she was too weak. She didn't know. It was wrong not to fall in love – and to fall in love as well. Two separate instances had shown her that – but, she realised later, the latter had been her own doing: she had confessed the sin in her heart, and expelled herself. She had taken her dream from herself. She could have – it _had been_ possible – to continue on. A day more, a week more, a month more – probably not a year, because the curse would have seized her eventually. But once she was away from that second failed job, she found herself calmer, colder. And she found herself taking the sword instead of the baton. Like her life was hers again.

But she forgot about the sort of trap that falling in love could leave. She heard rumours – both in her department an out – but it was only when her own spells were cast on her that she could believe, believe that the student,_ no, _man, that taught her had become this. And her heart cried. It screamed. It raged senselessly as her body was torn apart by the rose's thorns.

A teacher could never match their student. And she died, finally, in a poetic sense of injustice, destroyed by what she had so carelessly taught.


End file.
